Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Awesomebella Cooks-MAC AND CHEESE(,cheese,cheese)

I cooked. Again. And again it was a recipe request from my dad. As always with my father's requests this recipe involved a mass amount of CHEESE (like...around 7 cups...), milk and butter, oozing from all angles of some pasta. Yup. Homemade, scrumdidiliumtious mac and cheese, cheese, cheese, seattle style.

Apparently there is some amazing cheese place out in Seattle, WA (wouldn't know, never been there. I was the stay at home sudo-mom when my parents went...) that makes some amazing mac and cheese. That I know about and can vouch for its amazingness. How do I know it is good? My dad loved it so much he had frozen batches of it sent to our house after he came back from his week vacation. It is GOOD mac and cheese.

Yesterday I did my best to recreate it. I followed an actual recipe (well, mostly. I forgot the cheddar...). Check it out above. As far as macaronis go, this is a good recipe to follow. Really, really tasty. And cheesey enough to kill you...but tasty.

Photos:

*"oh, your photos look GOOD today, Bella! Did you get a better camera?" you say "WHY YES I DID THANKS FOR NOTICING!!!!" On saturday I bought my very own Canon EOS 60D (the one I have been saving up for the last 8 months!) and I kind of love it. More posts on that to come, but for now look at these gorgeous, uneditted shots of the foods I took with it!

a lot of pasta. enough to serve 32 people. There are only (only...haha) 10 in my house. We quadrupled the recipe. My dad insisted that there be left overs, and oh, there are.

Entire block of Parmesan and an entire block of Gruyere. (not pictured is a partial block of asiago that we used instead of cheddar.) Came to like 7 cups of cheese. Yes. No exaggeration.

2 whole sticks of butter. That stuff is really good for you, I hear. Paula Deen would be proud.

Tia, my very favorite su-chef. That kid grated ALL the cheese for me (entirely by her own will. She volunteered and didn't stop until she had done it all. And she helped me whisk the sauce. She is 12, but often she knows more about cooking than me. She is pretty much ready to open a restaurant.)

Spice mixture of kosher salt, garlic powder and chili powder.

MOUNTAIN of cheeses.

Lots of whisking involved, as we turned the sauce from just butter and flour, to a milk substance, to a thick, cheese loaded sauce of pure yum.

All mixed up and baked for 30 minutes.

DINNER IS SERVED!

And it was GOOD. Actually tasted (more or less) like the Seattle version. Good work, Bella (but mostly Tia).

What will my assistants and I cook next week? I know! But I'm not telling. Check out next week's post to find out.

*SIDE NOTE: AWESOMEBELLA COOKS ON AWESOME MONDAYS IS TURNING INTO AWESOMBELLA COOKS ON AWESOMETHURSDAYS. I have a small group that meets on Monday and I always end up rushing out before dinner is actually over. It makes more sense for me to cook and then stick around to eat, and I can do that better on Thursdays because I'm home.